Hirsch's latest was a lengthy analysis of all the government
assistance that has flowed in Tesla's direction.

But Musk was less than excited about the article, saying in an
interview on CNBC that, "if [Hirsch] was paid by an oil and gas
industry lobby, he couldn't have written a more favorable article
for them."

In his interview on CNBC, Musk referenced a blog post he
published last year that clarified the terms of the deal,
which Musk said made Hirsch's article "even more inexcusable
because he completely ignores what was written there."

In that post, Musk had written:

Of the $5 billion investment needed to bring the Gigafactory to
full production in five years, state incentives will cover
about 5%. Compared to the operational and upgrade costs over a
20 year period, expected to be approximately $100 billion,
state incentives will constitute just over 1%. This makes
sense: the $1.3 billion in incentives mostly consists of
alleviating a few percent of annual property and use tax on a
huge amount of equipment over the course of 20 years, an
average of about $50 million per year after initial
construction.

However, the 20 year mark is simply when the last of the
incentives expires. The Gigafactory itself will continue
contributing economically to Nevada for much longer. Our
automotive plant in California has been in operation for over
60 years with no foreseeable end in sight.

It stands to reason that the beneficiaries of a project should
also contribute to its creation. Given that Nevada will have
the largest and most advanced battery factory in the world and
a very large number of high-paying direct and indirect jobs,
contributing about 5% to the initial construction cost and a
few percent to costs thereafter seems pretty fair.

Finally, with the exception of the land conveyance, all of the
incentives approved by the legislature are performance based.
We must execute according to plan to receive them, meaning
that, while the state and Tesla both share the upside, only
Tesla suffers the downside.

For his part, Hirsch argued that Tesla, as well as Musk's other
companies, need government subsidies to survive.

"Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration
Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from
an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to
data compiled by The Times," Hirsch wrote. "The figure
underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a
public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups."

If there's one major criticism of Musk, it's that he presents
himself as a hero of capitalism while investing in and running
companies — Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity — that wouldn't exist
without government funding and support.

You hear it all the time. We heard it last year when Jason Mattera — author of a
book "Crapitalism: Liberals Who Make Millions Swiping Your Tax
Dollars" and something of an aggressive rising star in the world
of conservative journalism and commentary — went on Fox News and
listed Musk's offenses.

The thing is, critics of Musk who claim the man is reliant on big
government to keep his companies afloat aren't wrong. But the
other thing is that Musk and his companies have never denied
this.

When
I was reporting on Tesla during some darks days for the
startup back in 2008, the company made it abundantly clear that
it needed to hit certain marks to obtain a Department of Energy
loan guarantee and stay in business.

Built with government
money.Kevork Djansezian/Getty
Images

A few years later, Tesla warned in
an SEC filing that its DOE guarantees represented a
meaningful business risk, something that investors needed to be
aware of.

"We are dependent upon our ability to fully draw down on our loan
facility from the United States Department of Energy, which may
restrict our ability to conduct our business," the company said
in early 2010.